Beautiful in Autumn
by Darkness Alit
Summary: Celi drags Wolfram with her for a walk and a long overdue conversation.


_**Beautiful in Autumn**_

"Wolfram."

He paused, turning half back to see her. "Yes, Mother?" His intention to listen politely and then continue on his set path as quickly as possible wavered a little when she didn't glomp onto him or attempt to smother him in her bosom. She looked serious.

She looked sad.

"Mother? What is it?"

She sighed, forced such a smile that she might well not have bothered, and extended her hand. "Walk with me."

For a moment, he might have protested. But in the end… she hadn't asked. And he might argue, protest, but he always did as his Mother and brothers asked… well, almost always. Still… he offered his elbow rather than taking her hand.

She smiled faintly and put her hand on his arm, guiding him down the hall he'd stormed through before being paused by her soft call. "For all you look so much like me," she mused softly. "you take more after your father." She shook her head. "My three sons—all so wonderful, in their own ways, and none really like me."

"We're male, Mother. It's right for us to be different from you." He had a horrible moment's vision of Gwendal glomping onto Yuri with a happy squeal—and twitched.

"I mean that a little differently," she admitted, her tones still uncharacteristically soft. "Gwendal grew up without a father. Dunheely tried, and in a way, I think, succeeded, or nearly so. But at the same time he was just old enough to see my heartbreak without understanding. He saw that I loved Dunheely, and was devastated when he left. He also had to try to figure out how to deal with the son of the man he hated…"

"They didn't get along?" he asked. As far back as he could remember Conrart and Gwendal had been close… after their own fashion. "I suppose it makes sense it would take time, Conrart being—"

"Gwendal adored Conrart from the day he knew I was carrying him," she interrupted, forcefully. "That is what troubled him. How could he hate the man so terribly, yet not hurt or distance himself from the man's son? And Conrart does look much like his father. In the end… Gwendal seems to have decided it better not to risk falling in love—too many things he can't control, predict, order. He's built his impervious shell as best he can without shutting out those he already loves.

"Of course," she continued quickly, sounding more like the woman he knew as she pressed close to his arm, "that leaves him open, just a little, to new people. Like his majesty. Gwen quite—"

"Mother!" he snapped, pausing their walk.

"Oh, Wolf," she sighed, shaking her head. "Come. There are many more halls to wander."

He closed his eyes briefly, but resumed walking.

"Conrart, too, is rather closed off. Unwilling to risk his heart, and perhaps with reason. I've given him such a burden."

"Burden?"

"Half of each, full of neither. If his own brother can't accept him as he is… what hope has he for a lover to do so? He knew from so early an age what a heartbreak loneliness can be."

Wolfram swallowed, unsure what defense—if any—he could offer. What comfort he could give when, in his most selfish moments, he'd wished Conrart never born so there was no stain on the family's bloodline. So he didn't have to reconcile the brother who loved and protected so fiercely with the label of 'half-breed'.

"Yet for their heart-broken barriers, they are more like me than their looks would say. When they love, they hold nothing back, even if they never speak a word to the one they love. You, on the other hand," she shook her head, "are truly your father all over again."

Again his throat tightened—no one had ever told him what happened, and he had never heard any gossip about it. He only knew that his father had been out of the castle and their lives before his birth. And, despite carrying the man's name, Wolfram knew next to nothing about him. Ironic, really, that the one of them whose father was alive should know the least of him.

"He chased after me relentlessly," she continued, seemingly unaware of his contemplation, "lavishing me with praise and gifts, compliments and compositions of music or poetry, song. It did me good, really. I'd been devastated when Dunheely left, though I knew there was nothing I could have done to keep him here."

"Then—" he froze, biting his tongue.

"He left because human lives are so brief, and so their hearts burn brightly. He wanted to see more, to experience more. Can you imagine knowing that you would die within a set number of years? Humans almost never last more than a century—you'll have reached that time still a youth. If you knew you had less than twenty years, would you be fine waiting here? Or are there things you'd like to do?"

He considered that, and immediately came up with a long list of things he wanted to do. Nothing pressing for a clansman of his years, but if he were going grey without having managed… Still. "But he swore to be with you when he married you."

"No, Wolf. He swore to love me. To cherish me. And he was more faithful to those words than I was."

"He left! It doesn't matter if he still loved you!"

She paused them, looking steadily at him with an expression he couldn't place. "You really believe that? I never will. He loved me to the day he died. As much as I loved him, the love waned over time. I still love him, and I always will, but I get so lonely sometimes, I need someone, sometimes."

He looked away. "What is the point of this?"

"Gwendal never asked. I don't think he's thought about it in years. Conrart never asked either, but he understood. He knew his father, of course, so it's no surprise. But you never asked."

"Asked what?" he was in turmoil—he'd run such a gauntlet of emotions that he felt like he was going numb from it all.

"Why I let him leave. Why I didn't protest, and never held it against him."

"Because he was a human and looking for something—you just told me, Mother."

She shook her head. "No. That's why he left. Not why I let him go. If I'd so much as held out my hand for him he would have lived and died at my side. Conrart has that same devotion."

"Then why didn't you? Why did you let him go?" He couldn't comprehend it. "If you loved each other, were miserable apart, why did you let him go?"

"Because I loved him. Because he wanted to go. Holding someone who wants to leave isn't love, Wolfram. I let him leave because I loved him and wanted him to be happy. Perhaps the road he chose wasn't the right one, but it was _his_, and he would have changed, lost some of what drew me to him if he'd stayed when he really wanted to leave."

They walked in silence for some time as Wolfram wrapped his mind around the foreign concept. Letting go of someone you loved for their own good, no matter the cost to you? "Mother…" he asked at last, "why are you telling me this?"

"I love you Wolf. You're my darling boy." She stopped, taking his face into her hands as she spoke, her sincerity boring into his eyes. "And I have never regretted having you. If I could do it over again, knowing what I know, I would do it all the same, just to have you."She waited until he nodded to pull back. "I should never have gotten involved with your father. I don't regret you, but if I could have had you without requiring him, I certainly would change the past, given the choice."

She grew quiet, again allowing him this time to think. "If I'm so like him, why don't you regret me?" he asked at last, more miserable than those moments when Yuri first arrived back in their world and _never_ looked first for him.

"Because there is just enough of me in you. You're not a bad person, Wolfie. You truly love his majesty."

He frowned. "So what if I do?"

She giggled a little at his defensive, offended tones. "That makes you better than your father. He wooed me when I was broken with pretty words and grand gestures… but when I was won, he lost interest. The pursuit had been the pleasure… and though he fought off all others with cruel games or vicious remarks, in the end he grew bored and left. I didn't mind his leaving. I could feel you settling into my womb, and I had seen the change in him. I knew he was leaving long before he left. Once he had… I missed Dunheely. I hadn't realized until then how deeply his silent devotion touched me."

She had a misty look, so Wolfram avoided her eyes as they continued around the hall. "You never told me why you're telling me all of this." He could have quite happily lived his life without knowing that about his father.

"Because, though you love him, I see you chasing after him as your father chased me. I hear you yelling at those who take his time or attention from you, and it scares me, Wolfram. What happens if he gives in? If he looks only at you, thinks only of you. No—" She placed her fingers over his lips when he started to answer that it would be how it should be, how it aught to be. Silently thinking it would be wonderful. "Think about it truly before you reply."

With a huff, he considered it. He imagined Yuri looking for him, and felt a thrill of pleasure. Of satisfaction. The satisfaction grew when he imagined being at Yuri's side as they rode through the streets of the castletown… but his imagination balked at trying to put them in more intimate situations. He actually felt _uncomfortable_ when he tried to envision the beaming look Yuri gave Conrart turned towards him. The more he thought about Yuri being perfectly devoted to him, looking for him… the less he liked the thought. It felt _wrong_. A Yuri focused on him and him alone was actually a scary thought. The young king could be so intense, and more of the time than not Wolfram didn't understand where his ideas and plans came from.

He turned to his mother in his distress, and she nodded knowingly, solemn, and drew him into her arms. "You love him," she repeated, "and I am glad of it. But you are not in love with him… and if you aren't by now, you never will be." She laughed ruefully. "I should know. I tried too hard to love your father as much as I'd loved Dunheely. Now, Wolf," she took his arm and lead him out to the terrace, where they leaned against the railing of the same accord, looking down at the courtyard.

Wolfram blinked at the sight below, reminded forcefully of the errand he'd been on when his mother had stopped him.

"I was thinking we should take Greta on a tour of the allied nations. Only the safer ones, of course, those who agreed because they want peace, rather than for political reasons."

As he watched his fiancé throw a ball back and forth with his half-blood half-brother, the two seemingly in a competition for worst joke ever told as they played and laughed in their own world, he found himself speaking absently. "Cavalcade should be beautiful in Autumn."

His mother agreed with a squeeze to his arm as she laid her head on his shoulder.


End file.
